Sail sleeves are well known for use in sailing, and in particular for use with spinnaker sails on sailboats around the world. Prior art sleeves are generally in the form of a fabric sleeve and a guide arrangement that is connected to up-haul and down-haul lines. Their primary function is to be pulled over a spinnaker sail from the top down, thereby to “douse” the sail (i.e. cause collapsing of the sail, making it lose its wind). Such sail sleeves may be typically used in conjunction with a prior art rigid guide which is pulled over the sail. The prior art rigid guide assists in forcing the side edges of the sail to collapse towards each other, and prevents abrasion on the sail sleeve itself. The combination of the guide and sail sleeve are generally known as a sail “douser” or “snuffer”.
Snuffers or dousers are typically used on larger sized sailing vessels—from about 40 feet long. They facilitate the de-rigging of in particular spinnaker sails, and may be particularly useful where a large surface area of the sail may make manual handling of the sail difficult, or for short-handed sailing.
Currently the guides for dousers are typically moulded of light material such as Kevlar or carbon fibre composites, or glass fibres.
WIPO Publication Number WO 95/23732 discloses a snuffer including a sail sleeve and a ring shaped guide having flare shaped edges folded up about 180 degrees to help prevent damage to the sail. However, this invention may be dangerous to the vessel and boat crew during use.
U.S. patent publication Number U.S. Pat. No. 4,262,617 discloses a sail douser including a resilient helical formation which tightens around the sail and douses it when an associated douser guide ring is pulled down over the sail. This guide ring may not facilitate the storage of the douser and sail together below deck, and the ring may still be damaging to rigging and dangerous to deck hands while being rigged.
Reissued U.S. patent publication number RE29,279 discloses a device for launching and dousing light sails such as spinnakers. This invention uses a series of parallel snuffer guides connected by lines, instead of a sail sleeve. However, this design may be dangerous and potentially damaging to the rigging or the vessel, since a series of rigid guides could be swinging about above deck. These series of rings also may need to be removed from the spinnaker before storage of the sail.
In this specification, where reference has been made to external sources of information, including patent specifications and other documents, this is generally for the purpose of providing a context for discussing the features of the present invention. Unless stated otherwise, reference to such sources of information is not to be construed, in any jurisdiction, as an admission that such sources of information are prior art or form part of the common general knowledge in the art.